


Eat Or Be Eaten

by Meadowlarkwrites



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Help your local nonbinary and read, More tags to be added, Multi, Summary subject to change, Title Subject to Change, Zombie Gays, Zombies, gays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 22:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10863318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meadowlarkwrites/pseuds/Meadowlarkwrites
Summary: Will Alfred take things seriously? Will he learn James's real name? Is James crazy? No, maybe, definitely. Also, zombies.





	Eat Or Be Eaten

Glass groaned under a man's heavy bootfall. The noise was hardly noticeable, to him or those he hid from, when matched against the heavy gales of wind pushing their way through the expansive building. As he stepped over a pile of what had been compost but was now closer to dirt, the man decided that the place probably stank to high heaven.

His nose was clogged with dust and dried blood. 

To join the wails of wind buffeting the sides of the WowMart, light shuffling could be heard from outside. The man pursed his dry, cracked lips, peeled back his greasy blond hair, and did not let out a whine of discontent. Any noise was dangerous, and walking across a glass-covered floor was a necessary gamble. 

That night, Alfred found a can of peas and a block of Velveeta cheese. The peas were untouched by the masses, having been in a dumpster in the loading bay. The cheese was more questionable, considering it was found half-eaten in someone's desk.

Alfred considered it a feast. He mixed half the can with a quarter of the cheese, and made sure the numbers matched exactly up, then ate slowly. 

Old Alfred never would've eaten slowly.

The peas were soft, and crushed nicely when pressed to the roof of his mouth. Alfred sucked on the last few before choking them down his sore throats and staring at the line between the ceiling and the wall. He wondered if there was a word for that. He wondered if it mattered.

His home was an electrician's closet. It was on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, right next to Courage the Cowardly Dog. Alfred couldn't remember who that was, but that the dog lived in The Middle Of Nowhere, and so he called his home The Dog House. All of his homes were The Dog House, but especially the short term ones.

The next day, Alfred woke to scuffling. Instantly, his knife was at his side and his glasses on his face. He tried to ignore the way they slanted, and how they hardly helped anymore. A possum hissed at him, and Alfred cringed as he noticed the telltale signs that this home was occupado. What a weird word. He wasn't sure it existed.

The possum hissed again, and Alfred peeled himself from the hard concrete floor. Droppings clung to his jeans. He isn't care. He packed up his stuff easily, since there was only one bag, and bid his temporary roommate a fond farewell. The possum sniffed a good riddance.

Alfred's path wound next to a railway track. He liked trains. Somebody else also liked trains. That person looked like him. He walked on.

He found a river before noon. A second stream, a fetid brown swirl, stood out starkly atop the water. He couldn't drink there.

At three seventy two, according to his watch, Alfred took a break and consulted The Map. He couldn't remember why he was going where he was going, or what exactly where he was was going was, but he did know where it was, and that it was important, and so he was going there. Somebody who looked like him had helpfully marked his path in a bright red Sharpie, because that was that person's favourite colour. The street signs were too faded for Alfred to match them, but he didn't need to. He knew where he was going.

The sun went down at eight twenty nine, which was exactly the time it was supposed to go down. Pink hues mingled with the orange sky, while the wisps of grey clouds tinted purple. To the side of his highway, through an overgrown wheat field, was a house.

The house was small, Alfred thought as he approached it. He tore at the wheat with his bare hands and it grabbed at his ankles, begging him to save it, but Alfred didn't know how. It seemed the width of only one room, and only had two stories. Being where he was, and the age of the house, Alfred knew it had a basement, but the top floor looked more like an attic.

The door wouldn't open. Alfred went through a window. To get to the window, he had to climb up a drain pipe and crawl onto the roof above the porch. Old Alfred would have been too heavy to do that. He also learned that the house was much longer than it was wide. 

He smashed the window and waited. One minute, he was bored, nothing came to the door downstairs when he tried to kick it in. Alfred punched out the last bits of glass and pulled himself through. It was not the tight squeeze he was expecting, and he fell through. The sharp edges of glass strewn about made quick work of the callouses he had carefully built up, then went straight for the blisters underneath. Crushed crumbs dug into his knees through the jean fabric and he didn't hiss in pain.

Alfred was in an attic. It was about a room wide and several rooms long. There was a ladder on the far end, and blankets organised nearly on the floor between boxes. Someone had slept there. The larger boxes were stacked against the longer walls in neat, even columns and made Alfred feel like he was in a library.

Libraries were the worst place to be.

The wall next to the ladder was blank, save for another window. Alfred walked down the narrow corridor between sheer cliff faces of boxes and shelves and went down into the main level. He found himself in a garage. The small side door and overhead doors were boarded, with heavy mahogany dressers against them. They were covered to the point that Alfred was only assuming there were doors. Th only other door led through a pantry and into a little kitchen. 

Up until that point, Alfred assumed the house was abandoned. Maybe he'd find bodies rotting away in some room, or what remained of them locked behind doors. But, to see the pantry well stocked, or as well stocked as a pantry could be during Armageddon, had Alfred on guard.

As it was getting dark out and he had no idea of the amount of people nearby, Alfred flipped open his pocket knife. He stepped into the kitchen and around a little table, then froze as the sound of floorboards creaking reached his ears. The sound was human, because it hesitated. There was silence, save for the sound of wind brushing the rows of wheat and barley outside, and the settling of the old house.

Alfred decided to try negotiating. "I'm not gonn-"He wasn't even able to finish his thought, though, before footsteps came rapidly towards him. The person was wearing socks, but still hitting the ground hard enough to make a very intimidating noise. Alfred assumed they had to be large, and used that knowledge to launch himself at a shadow just as it appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

The first thing he noticed was that person most certainly was not large. This was a major problem, because Alfred had aimed for the torso of someone his height or higher. He hit this poor fellow in the face, with his shoulder. The two of them hit the floor with the loudest screech Alfred had ever heard from a human, and for a moment he was worried he body slammed a monster.

"GET THE HELL OFF ME YOU BLOOMING MADMAN."

Okay, definitely human. The second thing Alfred noticed was that this person was male, and a hot male. His hair was blond and in need of a trim, but Alfred liked the way his messy locks framed his face. His eyebrows were a far more desperate case than his hair, but Alfred felt it somehow suited him. His eyes almost sparkled, which eyes were definitely not supposed to do.

Alfred ignored the fact that this man hadn't bathed in what was probably close to two years, because neither had Alfred or really anyone else on the planet.

With Alfred sufficiently distracted by his appearance, the stranger took the chance to strike. He kicked the knife out of Alfred's hand and used the momentum to wrap the other leg around Alfred's throat. He grasped for the knife, just barely able to reach where it had slid to, and held it against Alfred's threat. Alfred was impressed.

"You move, I cut your throat. Now what the hell do you want?" This guy had an accent. This random guy, in the middle of what was probably Nebraska at one point, who had lived there the entire apocalypse and maybe longer, had an accent. Alfred's mouth went dry, and he looked up into his captor's eyes. The awkward silence lengthened, and Alfred realised he was probably supposed to answer the question.

"Oh, right, yeah, I need a place to stay." As he was speaking, he continued to mull over the accent. To keep it, the stranger wouldn't be talking to other people. Good to know. "Just for the night. I can pay you, I've got food and medicine supplies and stuff."

"You shouldn't mumble so much. I can hardly hear your conjunctions." Another silence played out, with the stranger considering whether or not to allow Alfred into his home and Alfred wondering what this conjugger thingamajig was supposed to be. "No, I think you should leave."

Eh? All that thinking and a rejection? The guy didn't really seem to need food, but, "Aw, cmon! Can't cha use the company or something? I got a harmonica. Consider me a travelling bard."

The man became flustered. "You- You do realise I could kill you right now? Or worse? And do you really speak like that all the time?"

"I guess I could sound out my words and stuff like that. That work for you?"

"Your grammar still... leaves to be desired, but at least now I can understand you." The man smacked himself in the face with his free hand. "No! You sidetracked me! I'm supposed to be kicking you out!"

"I'd like to see you try, sugar."

 

 

An hour later and two very soaked men sat on a couch, staring at a wall because they refused to look at each other or even break the tension with some kind of comment. The stranger had indeed kicked Alfred outside. It turned out the darkening skies earlier were not because it was getting late, but because rain was coming in. Actual night came while Alfred was attempting his way through the wheat field, and he panicked and ran back to the house.

The other man had come outside to yell at him, they got into a wrestling match that ended in the mud, and finally Alfred's benevolent benefactor threw his arms up with the most not-fine sounding 'FINE,' and let Alfred inside. 

"So, uh, figured I should probably introduce myself," Alfred began, carefully sounding out his words. He'd learned that the dude was not being a jerk and actually couldn't understand him. "My name's-"

"No," the man on the other end of the couch cut him off. "I don't want to know your name. I don't like you and you're leaving tomorrow morning."

Silence seemed to be a theme tonight. Alfred got bored of it, turned to the side, and flopped against the couch. "What am I supposed to call you then? Big Brows McButtmunch? BB McB for short?"

Big Brows McButtmunch did not appreciate his name. Instead, he kicked Alfred where a bruise was already forming on his side. "Call me James, if you really must."

"Like James Bond?"

"No, you dolt. Like King James. The king who was a bit of a twat but ruled better than anyone before him." James sighed at the blank look Alfred offered. "Look, it doesn't even matter, because you're leaving in the morning, and you likely won't need to be calling me anything before then."

Alfred grinned and relaxed on the couch, ignoring how annoyed James looked at the prospect of a damp couch. "Well that works just fine! And I can be Will Smith, because he's the best secret agent ever. In Men in Black, you know." Before Alfred could strike up a conversation about pre-apocalyptic alien media, James stood from the couch.  
"You can sleep here. I'm going to bed. Goodnight, Will." 

"Night, James."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first chapter about a year ago so it's quality does not speak for the rest of the fic. Also, I did some minor editing, and may have missed some inconsistensies.


End file.
